Shakespeare S Dark Lady Sonnets

"For I have sworn thee fair, and thought thee bright; Who art as black as hell, as dark as night." —William Shakespeare, Sonnet 147 In the boldest imagining of the era since Shakespeare in Love and Elizabeth, a finalist for the Italian Premio del Castello del Terriccio, this spellbinding novel of witchcraft, poetry, and passion, brings to life Aemilia Lanyer, the "Dark Lady" of Shakespeare's Sonnets—the playwright's muse and his one true love. The daughter of a Venetian musician but orphaned as a young girl, Aemilia Bassano grows up in the court of Elizabeth I, becoming the Queen's favorite. She absorbs a love of poetry and learning, maturing into a striking young woman with a sharp mind and a quick tongue. Now brilliant, beautiful, and highly educated, she becomes mistress of Lord Hunsdon, the Lord Chamberlain and Queen's cousin. But her position is precarious; when she falls in love with court playwright William Shakespeare, her fortunes change irrevocably. A must-read for fans of Tracy Chevalier (Girl With a Pearl Earring) and Sarah Dunant (The Birth of Venus), Sally O'Reilly's richly atmospheric novel compellingly re-imagines the struggles for power, recognition, and survival in the brutal world of Elizabethan London. She conjures the art of England's first professional female poet, giving us a character for the ages—a woman who is ambitious and intelligent, true to herself, and true to her heart.

Amelia Bassano Lanier is proved to be a strong candidate for authorship of Shakespeare's plays: Hudson looks at the fascinating life of this woman, believed by many to be the dark lady of the sonnets, and presents the case that she may have written Shakespeare's plays.

Seminar paper from the year 2010 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Literature, grade: 1,3, University of Erfurt, language: English, abstract: For about thirty years sonnet sequences were popular in England (1580s to the 1610s) . A sonnet is a poem of 14 lines of iambic pentameter with an elaborate rhyme scheme. The poets of these forms of poems wrote in order to express their deep human emotions. Especially, poets in Renaissance revealed the philosophy of humanism. Poets of Elizabethan time are mainly concerned with the subject of love. Thereby, they made use on metaphoric and poetic conventions which were developed by Italian poets of the fourteenth century like Petrarch or Dante. The Petrarchan, or Italian sonnet, consists of two quatrains and two tercets. To emphasize the idea of the poem, the rhyme scheme and structure work together. William Shakespeare reshaped the sonnet structure. The English, or Shakespearean sonnet, consists of three quatrains and a concluding couplet. Shakespeare used, like Petrarch, the structure of the sonnet to explore multiple facets of a topic in short. He, despite his high status as a dramatist, attracted no attention as a sonneteer . William Shakespeare was born in 1564 in Stratford upon Avon. In 1609 he retracted from the London live in theatre back to the city of his birth. In the very same year the publisher Thomas Thorpe announced the book “Shake-Speares Sonnets Never before Imprinted”. “When [Shakespeare] published his sonnets – or allowed them to be published – in 1609, the sonnet vogue was all but over [...]” . About the background and the reliability of this edition prevails disagreement. It is not resolved whether Shakespeare had wanted the publication. It is also uncertain whether the order of the sonnets is right or does it make any sense to rearrange the sequence. Even the division of the sequence into two parts – sonnet one till 126 address a young man and sonnet 127 till 154 address the Dark Lady – is questionable because many of the sonnets have no gender-markers. However, most editors accept the ordering from the 1609 edition . With 154 poems, Shakespeare wrote the longest sonnet cycle of the Elizabethan age. If we comply with the assumption of most editors, the poems one till 126 focuses a young blonde man, and the sonnets 127 till 152 are aimed at a Dark Lady who is the “conceptual antithesis of the young man” . The whole sequence ends with two rather insignificant love sonnets which have nothing to do with the previous sonnets.

Seminar paper from the year 2016 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Literature, grade: 2,0, RWTH Aachen University (Institut für Anglistik, Amerikanistik und Romanistik der RWTH Aachen), course: The Sonnet - History of a Genre, language: English, abstract: Nowadays sonnets, or probably even lyric in general, are not very popular anymore. That was quite different in the Elizabethan era when sonnet-writing was widespread during the so called “sonnet vogue” at the end of the 16th century. A lot of sonnets were written during that time by poets like Sir Philip Sidney, Edmund Spenser or of course William Shakespeare, whose sonnet sequence contains 154 sonnets in total. Some of Shakespeare’s sonnets are still very well-known today and are read and analysed by students in schools or universities. To get a better understanding of these poems, an important aspect one should be concerned with is the addressee of each sonnet. Shakespeare had two major addressees for his sonnets: The “Fair Youth” – respectively the “Young Man” – and the “Dark Lady” whose identities are still a matter of speculation even today. The first part of Shakespeare’s sonnet sequence, namely sonnets 1–126, is directed to the “Young Man”, while sonnets 127–154 are written to the “Dark Lady”. But how are these figures – the young man and the dark lady - portrayed by the poetic persona? What does this portrayal tell the reader about the relationship between persona and addressee? Are these relationships of a similar nature or do they differ in some aspects? In this paper I am first going to deal with the “Fair Youth” sequence: There will be a short characterisation of this figure before I will concern myself with the relationship to the poetic persona. After a brief summary of these results the “Dark Lady” sonnets will be examined in the same manner while regarding the results about the “Young Man” I achieved before. These points will be executed by looking at several sonnets in detail. For the “Fair Youth” section these are going to be sonnets 18, 20, 26, and 116; for the “Dark Lady” sonnets I will deal with sonnets 127, 130, 129, and 144. At the end I will recapitulate the ascertained outcomes in a conclusion.

"The Dark Lady of the Sonnets" is a one-act play written by means of George Bernard Shaw. A departure from Shaw's more well-known works, this play is a humorous and satirical exploration of the mysterious parent from William Shakespeare's sonnets, regularly known as the "Dark Lady." Set in the early 17th century, the play opens with William Shakespeare himself, grappling with creator's block as he struggles to locate thought for his poetry. The plot takes an unexpected flip while the Dark Lady, the object of Shakespeare's poetic affections, turns out to be none other than Queen Elizabeth I. Shaw uses this revelation to weave a comedic narrative, injecting wit and smart speak into the interaction between the Bard and the Queen. The play satirizes Shakespeare's romantic entanglements and mocks the conventions of Elizabethan drama, all while imparting a lighthearted exploration of the complexities of love, reputation, and artistic idea. "The Dark Lady of the Sonnets" is a short and exciting work that showcases Shaw's wit and ability to playfully engage with ancient and literary topics. It offers a unique angle on the speculative components of Shakespeare's private lifestyles and relationships, including a hint of humor to the area of Elizabethan poetry and drama.